Bad Samaritan, the fifth Nick Forte novel, is available now from Down & Out Books.

One Bite at a Time

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Blood on the Bayou - Thursday

Bouchercon 2016
took place in New Orleans September 15 – 18. While I’ve never been to a bad
Bouchercon—Albany was a logistical nightmare but the panels were solid—the Big
Easy may have been my favorite.

I’m providing my
impressions over the next few weeks. Your experiences may not lead you to agree
with everything reported here, but it’s not your blog, is it?

Wallace Stroby—who
looks like Jason Bateman’s somewhat disreputable older brother—says what all
former journalists say about getting stuck or being blocked: it’s a job. Get it
done. He says he doesn’t miss the news business much, but he does miss being
around the people. I’ve heard that from quite a few former journalists. Journalism
must have been a hell of a way to make a living back in the day when a living
could be made from it.

JT Ellison made
contact with the Nashville cops by calling and asking if there had ever been a
serial killer in Nashville and the cop told her to come on down, as if they
were holding interviews for the position. I’m going to have to get to Killer
Nashville one of these days. They seem to have the right attitude.

God, I love
listening to writers talk about writing. This was a perfect opening panel: good
writers talking about writing. We’re off and running.

12:00 One More
Time: Novels and Characters Taking on Another Life on Screen. Lee Goldberg,
moderator.

Nina Sadowsky:
Don’t remake great old movies. If the original was bad, have at it.

Phoef Sutton and
Alexandra Sokoloff agree that set pieces are key to getting a novel adapted.
(Filed under “Microsoft Fails:” Word considers “Phoef” to be a misspelling.)

David Morell had an
interesting backstory on First Blood.
The book is ardently anti-war. The original Rambo
movie less so, but still leaning that way. In the sequel, the line “Sir, do we
get to win this time?” set off such a jingoistic wave in the country Morell and
the book were virtually blacklisted from liberal bookstores and libraries, each
of which had been his champions prior to that. After ten years or so the book
and films had become so much part of popular culture he and the original novel
became acceptable again.

Previously Unknown
(by me) Fact: Die Hard was adapted
from a book (Nothing Lasts Forever)
that was itself the sequel to The
Detective, which was made into a movie starring Frank Sinatra.

Alexandra Sokoloff:
Producers will want to change your story into whatever they fantasize their
mistress is doing.

Lee Goldberg once
wrote a story about a TV executive driving in his car when The Big One hits LA,
and how he finds his way to safety. A studio executive was interested, but
asked could they make a couple of changes. Goldberg assumed the TV exec would
have to have a different profession. The studio guy wanted to swap out the TV
exec for six Midwestern cheerleaders, and—since LA earthquakes are
cliché—change it to a tsunami. Basically a wet tee-shirt movie. Goldberg passed.
The studio exec probably still wonders why.

Nina Sadowsky,
quoting Nicholas Kazan: They pay us to take the meetings. We’d do the writing
for free.

Lee Goldberg: Ideas
are easy. Execution is everything. That’s why people who have had previous
successes can so often get something else made.

Phoef Sutton, when
asked about Robert McKee, believes McKee has inadvertently done storytelling in
general a grave disservice. Sutton does not believe McKee intended for his
book, Story, to be followed so
slavishly. McKee was a charismatic teacher, but the book is indecipherable.

Nina Sadowsky,
following up on Sutton’s comment: You can learn structure, not voice.

Phoef Sutton; James
M. Cain was asked if having Walter Neff dictate the entire story of Double Indemnity as he dies was Cain’s
idea. Cain said, “No, but it would have been if I had thought of it.”

David Morell: It’s
not a writer-friendly environment when one has to contend with executives who
could not survive in any other environment, and often not even in this one.
Example given: Morell pitched an idea for a story about a mutant form of rabies.
The exec had just made a movie in which rabies figured, and suggested changing
rabies to industrial pollution. When Morell pointed out industrial pollution is
not contagious, the exec replied, “Fuck it. No one will notice.”

1:30 Road to
Find Out: Research. Harriette Sackler, moderator.

Michael Gear:
Always remember the term “Willing suspension of disbelief.” Research is what
allows the author to get the details right, which develops the trust the reader
needs to suspend disbelief.

Veronica Forand: If
you don’t know something, find a book that explains it for kids to get the
basics down first.

Jan Burke: Coroners
speak for the living, such as victims’ families and others who might be
affected by this cause of death.

D. P. Lyle: The
ripple effects of murder are enormous and too often neglected.

Jan Burke is
appalled at the state of much of what we do forensically in this country.
Examples:

Each state has different standards for submitting DNA into CODIS (Combined DNA Index System),
depending on the crime. Auditing to see if even those standards are met is
lacking.

There 100,000 unidentified corpses
lying around in the United States and we cannot even assume they have been
measures and weighed, let alone fingerprinted or sampled for DNA. Not all
states require the reporting of unidentified remains to NamUs (National
Missing and Unidentified Persons System).

Homicide investigations do not begin
until a coroner rules a death as suspicious, and there are no national
standards for coroners.

Jan Burke: Forensic science is designed to be understood by
“the biggest idiot on the jury.”

Jan Burke: A missing person is “where hope can become cruel.”

D.P. Lyle, quoting Lee Goldberg on why so many cop shows get
the science wrong: If you give me a choice between story and fact, I’ll choose
story every time.

Alistair Kimble: Most cases are still broken by talking to
people. That will show the investigator where to look, what to look for, and
what’s important.

Jan Burke: A real benefit of the CSI shows is the increased
numbers of women going into the sciences.

Five accomplished liars authors (Ingrid Thoft—who won
the Shamus Friday night, congratulations, Ingrid—Lachlan Smith, J.D. Rhoades,
Ben Lieberman, Julie Smith) told stories that could have been true or false.
Mostly false, but two things were learned amid the laughter:

Truth is stranger than
fiction.

The best lies have a
lot of truth in them.

7:00 Down & Out Books Fifth Anniversary Event

Paraphrasing Art Mullin in Justified, it gave me a little bit of a writer’s chubby to see the
caliber of talent I’m now included with by being a Down & Out author. James
Ray Tuck read and emceed a lineup including Eric Beetner, Tom Pitts, Gordon
Brown, Jeffery Hess, S.W. Lauden, Ian Truman, J.L. Abramo (who also went on to
win a Shamus Friday night, congratulations, Joe), Grant Jerkins, Danny Gardner,
Gary Phillips, Jen Conley, and yours truly that wrapped up what would have been
a full and rewarding day even if Tim O’Mara had not kept me out at Sneaky
Pete’s until 2:00 AM.

On Monday we have an interview with Australian author Andrew
Nette that’s worth a read. We’ll get back to Bouchercon doings next Thursday.

About Me

Two of my Nick Forte Private investigator novels (A SMALL SACRIFICE and THE MAN IN THE WINDOW) received nominations for Shamus Awards. I also write a series of police procedurals set in the economically depressed town of Penns River PA, published by Down & Out Books. A non-fiction essay, “Chandler’s Heroes,” appeared in Spinetingler Magazine online in October of 2013.
I live in Laurel MD with The Beloved Spouse.